Motherthing

by Ainslie Hogarth

Nothing else matters but her pain, the biggest, loudest thing in the world, unimaginable, a way that people only ever expect to feel maybe once in their life, if ever at all, and maybe never even really recover from. She gets this way all the time.

This love makes it okay to be stuck here on earth; makes it okay that these routines and aches and obligations are life and that’s just it; makes you open your eyes and see every little bliss a moment has to offer:

We’re critters in a crudely perforated shoebox.